actionable intelligence

Actionable intelligence is information that can be followed up on, with the further implication that a strategic plan should be undertaken to make positive use of the information gathered. This meaning is distinct from the use of actionable intelligence in a legal context, which means that information meets the legal requirements for a justifiable (actionable) lawsuit.

In information technology (IT), actionable intelligence, also called actionable insight, is often spoken of in the context of big data and predictive modeling. In marketing, artificial intelligence (AI) can help companies shrink the gap between customer intent data and actionable insight by feeding intelligence into customer relationship management (CRM), marketing automation and other operational tools. This type of holistic approach to gaining insights from customer data can help a company meet the challenges associated with working with big data and exploit information that can help make the company more profitable.

Actionable intelligence that helps a company get an advantage in the marketplace is sometimes referred to as competitive intelligence (CI). The challenge to harnessing the power of competitive intelligence is how to find information that's hidden in a data set that's variable and volatile. One of the solutions that seems to work best for many companies is to build front-end visualization interfaces that present data in models anyone in the line of business (LOB) can easily comprehend and follow up on.